The Great Content Shift – Ideas from NAB 2012

Like all large industry gatherings, NAB Show 2012 was busy with just under 1600 exhibitors showing their wares and announcing plenty of new products for the 90,000+ attendees to see. The annual National Association of Broadcasters event earns it boast as the world’s largest electronic media trade show and conference for broadcasters, digital media and entertainment professionals. This year’s show was actually bigger than last years with over 825,000 square feet of exhibit space for the attendees to prowl.

The show theme this year, The Great Content Shift, put the focus on massive amount of online content being created and then delivered to a growing array of digital platforms. In many ways, this show needs a new name – can you really still call this the broadcasting industry when so much of today’s focus is on streaming audio and video content. Today’s video world is driven by the consumers who want media in smaller doses delivered to whatever device they happen to have nearby. Many sessions showcased new tools and techniques not only for the video professional that wants to stay up with the latest technologies and for ‘the rest of us’ that simply wants to include audio and video in our digital worlds.

From a hardware technology perspective, this year’s hot topics seemed to be 4K video (video with a horizontal resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels) and OLED (Organic Light-emitting Diode) screens and monitors. The Canon EOS-1D C 4K camera (at a whopping $15,000 price tag) and the Red Ray 4K Cinema Laser Projector were just 2 of the many 4K products demonstrated at NAB 2012.